While you were in Muskoka...

Happy May 2-4 hangover week everyone! Instead of participating in the traditional binge drinking that is Victoria Day weekend, I was enlisted by my fellow teachers to participate in a "fashion show" at our school's Arts Festival. Emily and I begrudgingly dragged ourselves to daily 2-hour practices in preparation of our big debut. We are usually left out of the details of every school event, and this was no exception. Until the day of the performance, we didn't know what time we would be performing, who we would be performing for, or why the performance was taking place. I still don't have the answer to the last question, but so it goes as a foreign teacher.... lots of questions and very few comprehensible answers.


Despite the fact that we didn't really know what was going on, we set our alarm clocks for 9am Saturday morning and ventured out into the school yard to find this:

Our students had been practicing fervently during the weeks leading up to this elusive arts festival. The first time we discovered anything about it was when one of our afternoon classes was inexplicably absent. I think we were too excited with our shortened work days to notice all of this going on in our backyard. Clearly, all of their practice paid off. 

The students' families were invited to join in the festivities so we got to meet this little cutie, the little sister of one of our students.

 Sparklicious

A comedy skit to start off the talent competition. I'm sure they were hilarious, 

but they lost me at "ni hao".

This skit involved some slapstick. The little guy fell. I'm still not sure whether it was intentional or not. Funny either way.

Funnier still. "But teacher it doesn't say fuck! There's an 'x' not a 'u'!"

Chinese hip hop dance complete with guyliner. First place in my eyes. 

This was deemed a quiet zone with some zen music softly playing in the 

background while the students painted T-shirts. 

So much talent!

Day two of the arts festival brought us to the dance studio to prepare for our show. We thought it was for one more practice before our performance. We were wrong... we hung out with students while we waited to get our hair and makeup done. 

Getting ma hurr did.

Em and Carrie getting pretty-fied. Carrie is my favourite teacher at the school for obvious reasons. 

These kids make me laugh.

Transformation complete. 

Heading to the stage.

Nausea commencing at the realization that our audience is just short of 1000 people.

My 15 year old students not looking like 15 year olds as they prepare backstage for their dance number.

More Chinese hip hop. The guy with the blue jacket lurking in the background is my dance partner. My students warned me that he is a 'bad guy'. When I asked them to explain what they meant, google translate was used and the word "nymphomania" came up. Not accurate pertaining to gender, so I did a mini lesson on the gender-neutral (and slightly more appropriate?) word "creep" that day. Awesome teacher, I know.

I have a video of our performance, but that will be kept on lock down to spare myself a second round of embarrassment. Lessons learned from the arts festival "fashion show": 

1) when asked to participate in a school event, 

get EVERY detail before any agreement of participation is made

2) White men can't jump? White girls can't dance (gracefully to Chinese music).